Christopher M. Gleason

Christopher Gleason’s American Poly is a well-researched exploration of how a once-hidden practice grew and emerged into greater public consciousness. He traces the roots current polyamory to the U.S. counter cultural movements and increased interest in Eastern and ‘new religions’ in the 1960’s. While creating definitions of polyamory for themselves and outsiders, practitioners often stressed how they were not ‘swingers,’ but considered the lifestyle a way of expanding and strengthening the bonds between committed monogamous partners. American Poly focuses on white heterosexuals and their groupings, usually one man and multiple women, exploring the major organized groups in polyamory and their differences, convergences, and schisms. Although mentioning polyamorists’ attempts to connect with gays, lesbians, and bisexuals, there is almost no mention of possible same-sex attraction between the partnerships examined in the book, and non-whites in the lifestyle appear only in Gleason’s afterword on the current state of polyamory.… (altro)